Lac Megantic is rebuilding but can never repair the hole in its heart left when a runaway engine pulling tankers of crude oil derailed and exploded last July in the picturesque Quebec town, killing 47 people in by far the worst of a series of such fiery oil train crashes in North America.

One year on, we should all be asking whether prudent steps are being taken, and quickly enough, to prevent another such disaster amid the huge growth in rail traffic hauling crude from shale oil deposits, such as the giant Bakken field in North Dakota, to refineries across the continent.

Canada, after all, is a country built on railways, with all kinds of dangerous and flammable goods — especially oil and petrochemicals — bombing through our cities and towns day and night.

Few Canadian municipalities do not have at least some skin in this game.

But on whether all that can be done to improve safety has been done, the jury — surprisingly — is still out.

Canada has at least required the phase-out by May 2017 of older rail tanker cars built before October 2011, the kind that derailed in Lac Megantic.

But U.S. regulators have so far not opted for a similar withdrawal, even though the industry has adopted tougher 2011 standards for new tanker cars.

The problem?

More than 90,000 of the older-design cars, so-called DOT-111s, are reportedly still used to haul crude oil and other dangerous cargo.

That includes nearly 40,000 for oil, of which only about one-third are said to meet the tougher 2011 standards.

Already, there’s talk the U.S. Department of Transportation could bring in even more stringent safety levels this fall, going beyond the latest standard to require thicker-walled vessels with even more protection against punctures and fires when cars derail.

The industry itself, facing huge conversion costs, is also reportedly trying to work out a new design to recommend to American regulators.

The surprise is not that regulators and industry on both sides of the border, in an integrated economy, are finally taking the dangers of oil rail shipments seriously, but that they still haven’t hitched their acts together.